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CEO of Amiga, Inc. Interviewed
vlangber submitted an interview with Bill McEwen about the current state of Amiga, Inc. and their plans for the future. Bill says,
"[W]e established the concept and vision of a scalable, embeddable, multi-threaded, memory protected operating system or digital environment that would run from a cell phone to a server. This is what you are going to see us deliver."
While Amiga OS4 has been in pre-release since 2004, a final release is planned for later this year.
I used to work with a guy who was obsessed by Amigas. He kept prediciting they would take over the world. I hope he hasnt been holding his breath all this time like I told him too
another Roadkill on the Information Superhighway
But what about bsd?
Back in the day, I was a big Amiga fan. And like most Amiga folks, I had multiple machines. They were great.
Commodore really screwed up with the marketing. It was like plot of "The Producers"... do everything you can to make it fail.
Now it's yet again, "Wait until you see what we have planned!" Reminds me of the old days.
Whatever this company is doing, it's "Amiga" in name only. They really need to change the name and let "Amiga" die with whatever shred of respect that great machine once had.
Can it do the old Amiga trick of grabbing the menu bar and pulling down to reveal the window below it, which could actually be of a different screen resolution?
This may sound like a small, silly thing to stick on, but it does work to remind me that the Amiga was a unique combination of clever programming AND clever hardware at a special time in computing history - What makes this new Amiga an Amiga beyond just sharing a name?
I hope it's not Guru Meditations...
"[W]e established the concept and vision of a scalable, embeddable, multi-threaded, memory protected operating system or digital environment that would run from a cell phone to a server." What part did they establish the concept for? The scalable, embeddable, multi-.... Well, kudo's to them for getting up and trying again.
Just the name on a building somewhere with zero relationship to what came before and nobody cares.
Please - stop using Amiga name. Amica was a respectful brand and now it's a legend. Please do not kill Amiga with anything you have - use new product name instead. Don't do like General Motors company did to Chevrolet brand - Chevrolet was a well known and well respected brand all over the world - now General Motors call Korean made cars Chevrolets. They have totally raped the brand. I hope it won't happen with Amiga.
They are attacking the problem as the underest underdog. But just from the quote in the summary, I can predict they will need to change that guy before they can succeed.
No company ever got successful with a single product that was applicable to all levels of possible applicability. Microsoft is successful because it makes ubiquitous desktop software, not because Windows XP is modular and its kernel lightweight and fast and embeddable. Sun makes a great VM that really runs well on servers, but it's not exactly a common language among the masses. IBM's AS400 is a pretty neat system, but I wouldn't want it as my mom's computer.
You need to pick your niche and carve it out before you go about trying to make your product ubiquitous. Success comes when people see your product and know immediately where it is applicable. Growth comes when you get them to see it applicable to their domain as well. However, if they don't see the first part, they won't accept the second part.
I knew a photographer who was pretty decent at any sort of photography that a client could dream up. From detailed macro work to poster-quality landscape work, this guy did it all. He had to do it as a hobby because he couldn't get enough work from his clients. He decided to nail down what his acceptable project type was and decided on industrial equipment photography. He can't take a vacation or spend his millions of dollars in profits because his phone is always ringing with new offers for work. By limiting his range of work, he became much more visible to those people who would hire him. Until he did that, he was just another guy among the crowd.
Amiga is just another guy among the crowd.
These guys should just get together with OS/2 and then they can both take over the world!
...but was the "Amiga" really about a software platform. It was the combination of that super-cool hardware and software. If there is no Denise and Fat Agnus, can it really be Amiga. Is there any point these days?
P.S. I've owned a 500, 3000, and 4000 all sold at profit after long use(I guess I should thank Newtek).
Established the idea, perhaps. But while you've been talking about, both Windows and Linux have actually done it.
I like Amega as much as the next guy (well, maybe a lot more than the average non-/. crowd) but I do wonder what the hell is going on here, what are they doing? why are they doing it? what gap are they trying to fill?
Take for example;
"While Amiga OS4 has been in pre-release since 2004, a final release is planned for later this year."
So, a pre-release was in 2004, and it's now 2006 and it's not a final yet? who is working on it? They are talking about OS5 in TFA but there seems to be some doubt about whether or not the kernel is even written - from TFA "...asked if they were interested in developing the kernel for OS5. This implies that the kernel hasn't even been started. If the kernel work hasn't even started, the eventual release of OS5 seems very uncertain and far away"
So they create something and don't ship it then try and say they are further along than they are, then just not give a clear answer about what is going on, it was all "oh, yeah, I know the schedule, but I won't tell you". I have serious doubts about what is goign on here... and that was before I found out that there were only 5 people working on it!
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
Amiga Inc have been sponsoring a port of Duke Nukem Forever to the new OS
All true. Amiga was clever, cool for it's time, and got totally eclipsed by commoditized hardware. Now you can emulate one on your PC if you're feeling nostalgic.
Software patents delenda est.
Or did you mean a sound chip capable of producing four-voice, quality 8-bit digitized sound?
it's been almost 14 years and the Amiga hasnt moved forward does anyone really believe this is gonna happen? Funniest line is when he promises a new version of the Amiga OS that is "much better than OSX from Apple"
Feels very strange to look at their web site though, somehow to me the name just doesn't click in the modern era. Here's what Commodore are doing today. As I understand it, a company bought all rights to the name and launched themselves as Commodore. Via the Retrobits podcast I heard an interview with a US salesman for them - apparently they're quite serious about the Commodore name, and want to revive the spirit and attitude of working rather than just the name.
Having read about the way Commodore worked I'm not especially certain that's a great strategy, but it'll be interesting to hear what happens.
Cheers,
Ian
"a scalable, embeddable, multi-threaded, memory protected operating system or digital environment that would run from a cell phone to a server."
Finally! A closed-source, non-free, proprietary alternative to Linux! God, how long have we waited?
I remember around the days of the Video Toaster, people refusing to buy Amigas just due to the rabid fanboism of the so-called "Amigaoids". It was even worse than the Mac fans on Digg who make multiple sock puppet accounts just to click thumbs-down on anyone saying anything bad about their deity/computer maker.
Eventually, because there wasn't a real clear description to people what was so good about the Amiga other than "cool sound, cool graphics... OMG, look how FAST it bounces this ball around the screen with 10 apps open !!!!11!!!111one". Being loyal to something is great, but pretty much most people care about is if its going to do the job they need it to, be it AV work, word processing, or a data dump for their business's mailing list. Pure irrational evangalism drove a lot of people away from the Amiga.
I know almost nobody who is a PC fanboi, its just a solution that gets the job done in a decent manner. The old adage, "nobody has gotten fired for buying IBM." is a sad one, but people rather buy "standard" PCs than be stuck with they believe is a marginal platform, that may be a dinosaur.
Pink.
I am not an atomic playboy!
Whatever Amiga Inc says, it's all just vapor. Let's look at the facts.
1. AmigaOS 4 is in beta, but will not be finished until hardware is available to run it on
2. There is no hardware to run AmigaOS 4 on
3. No-one seems to be able to get licences to make compatible hardware
4. The market is fast shrinking, with the only company ever to make hardware (Eyetech) having given up
The worst thing is, even if they somehow do manage to get a final version of AmigaOS 4 out the door, what will you be able to do with it? Run the same old apps you were running ten years ago a lot faster. Sure, there are some updates, but even basic stuff isn't covered. No modern office suites. No email clients that support HTML mail, POP3 with SSL etc. No web browser that supports flash, Javascript 2.0, CSS or much beyond HTML 3.2. The last major commercial game released was Quake.
If the platform has been open-sourced years ago, it might have had a future. AROS is probably the best bet at the moment. I still love AmigaOS, but I just find it laughable when McEwan comes out with this crap. How many years has he been saying it now? For how many years has nothing happened? Remember World of Amiga 2000, when you told everyone there would be the new system and OS ready to see when in fact you hadn't even started? Show us the money Bill, or don't expect us to beleive anything.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
This seems like some kind of a scam. What can one think after reading this:
It is obvious that either this guy has no idea at all of what is going on, or that he is lying and there is no development at all, the latter being much more likely. I read the other interview linked from the article and it was full of the same nonsense - definitely not anything that I'd expect from a serious business let alone its CEO. It is completely ridiculous.
Although I respect what Amiga was in the past (although I never personally used it), my advice to the Amiga fans and hobbyists is to forget about this "company". Amiga is dead.
a hardcore Amiga fan back in the day. So were all my friends. I loved my Amiga 500... it got me through a CS degree when there was little to no chance of getting enough time on the departments own systems to do my project. And wow what an operating system... it made Windows 3.1 look positively stupid. The Amiga defined and fit the zeitgeist of that time perfectly and will always hold a special place in my heart. Then there was the day Amiga corp. died (to the tune of bye-bye Ms. American pie). All us CS nerds felt like Elvis had just died. I stayed with my Amiga for years after, even though the parent company were long gone. It had a special place for me as it had unfailingly been there for me when I needed it and we had been through some of the best times of my life together. However eventually it was beyond impossible to deny any more that my little buddy had seen his day and I sadly moved over to PC.
However, now is not then, and we're all grown-up now with our business laptops. Where on earth can Amiga find a market now? They're not even close to being the same company or attempting to appeal to the same market. Is the market demnographic that defined the original Amiga buyer even still there?
Even the Amiga vision and sense of community has been fulfilled by Linux, which has unassailable advantages over Amiga Os and any other commercial product in that you can download for free and install on the hardware that you have already. I would love to see Amiga OS on sale again but I'm not sure even I could really find a need for it other than some misplaced sense of nostalgia, which would probably fade as soon as I booted it and realised I didn't recognise the new AmigaOs at all. Another nice OS with no third parties writing apps or games for it? If I wanted that I'd buy OS/X.
Hey guys, it's me, Justin. I just wanted to touch base with you guys and give you a heads up! Listen, this whole x86 computing thing is just a fad. Amigas are still taking over the computer world. Just give it more time, you know? You just have to wait until like, um, 2009. Okay?
- Justin
P.S. You bros are the best! My mom says hi.
He's strategizing, joined a competitor, and developing a new system to combat this upstart Amiga product!
Seriously though, the Amigas and Atari STs were always the better machines in the day compared to anything else. I was an Atari fanboy at the time, and quite passionate about it, but the Amiga was thoroughly better.
Anyone up for a game of Dungeon Master?
The site amiga.org did an interview with Bill McEven a few weeks ago http://www.amiga.org/modules/news/article.php?stor yid=6955
Hyperion, who are working on AmigaOS 4 did a statement
http://www.amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-2006-09-00085- EN.html
Bill McEven responded later
http://www.amiga.org/modules/news/article.php?stor yid=6970
The Amiga community - yes, ther is still a community - is pretty sick of Bill.
When I was 14 or so (I think) my Dad bought me a Commodore 64, and I was one of the lucky ones cause I had a 5 1/4" floppy drive (360K of course). Me and my buddy spent hours working on that thing. We learned to program in BASIC, and we programmed some pretty cool stuff. I wrote a program that was so big once, that the code went into the memory section defined for variables (they weren't protected), and the stupid program trashed my code. I couldn't figure out what was going on. Anyway that's another story. Assembly changed a lot of things for me on the C64, but also another story. My next computer purchase was an Amiga 500 (or was it an Amiga 512?). What an amazing machine. I remember my PC buddy had all sorts of problems because it used the backslash instead of slash for path divisions and coming from the C64 world, I had no idea what a slash was. Or what a dot was. Some great ideas came out of that machine. I remember you could hard wire in a switch (onto the motherboard, using 2 wires and a toggle switch) and change the amount of video RAM available. I remember I had to buy a new power supply to get cleaner power so I could do something that needed doing (forget what now). Anyway, that machine really moved me along the computer world, and got me where I am today. I owe Amiga a great deal, and I will certainly buy one when they are available, if for no other reason than nostalga.
Mean what you say...say what you mean.
Its a real shame the Amiga fizzled, it had a great many things going for it. Pretty amazing what they made a 7.14MHz machine with 512k ram do, imagine what it would be like today if they hadnt screwed up :)
The community at its peak was awesome, never seen anything like it since.
Good luck to the new owners!
...and its name is Linux.
Does anyone know if Duke Nukem Forever will run on it?
http://my.telegraph.co.uk/dublinclontarf
Last I heard they didn't even have hardware for OS4. They failed miserably even when they had the best desktop OS on the market, which is definately not true now. The company itself has been involved in legal battles, technological blunders, community alienation, etc. for the last 10 years. If you read the forums, makers of AmigaOS4 hardware have reported that Amiga has stopped communicating with them altogether. Add to that that the head of the company has been prone to flip (bordering on rude) comments to the user community over the years, that is when he's not ignoring them altogether. Why would ANYONE waste time with this company or anything they produce? Talk about an exercise in futility.
A whole five? Novell devotes more than that to the Linux kernel alone, don't they?
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
See subject. I thought they'd have died out by now.
I'm just waiting for the new version of BLAZEMONGER!
Duke Nukem, bah!
That horse is so dead, it already smells. Even duct tape can't hold it together. Grow up and dismount the dead horse.riding a dead horse
I owned everything from the original 1000, through the 4000, Video Toasters/Flyers, Kitchen Syncs (T.B.C's) all souped up with either GVC or Progressive Peripherals CPU Accelerators. Folks, It was great while it lasted. Some of my fondest times in computing was on the Amiga platform. IT IS DEAD. BeOS was the last shot at something truly great. Give it up.
It's called AROS and it's mature (9 yrs) and actively developed, look at the screenshots to have a glimpse of the available software. Note that this is not an emulator: while the hosted version can run at lightning speed under Linux in a X window, there is a native x86 version too which will boot off a CD.
but does it come in black?
This sig is licensed under the Free Sig Foundation License, you may re-distribute it as long as you retain this notice
Being an hardcore Amiga user for years and years (touched my first PC with windows 95), and still being an active amiga user (im Editor of Retro Review Magazine wich is still complettelly done on Amiga computers using page stream 4 just out of spite and for keeping the retro mistique within) Its with a little sadness that I keep seing this interviews and release announcements that never turn into nothing real.
Lets take a look at what the Amiga was and represented back then , In the mid 80's the Amiga was problably the most powerfull home computer one copuld have, and with powerfull I mean in almost every aspect, for example, when I first eard the word multimedia PC, I couldnt understand the concept, why ? because my Amiga had ALL the features that the oh so new Multimedia PC had, and it had them years Ago. When the PC world was DOS DOS DOS the Amiga already had a Real OS with a real Shell and a useable GUI. The amiga was/had all that one could need, Powerfull graphics, Amazing Sound, Powerfull processor and was indded ahead of its time and at an affordable price, did you know that for sometime the most powerfull mac one could have was an Amiga 4000 running Shapeshifter ( mac emulator) this was when the 68040 was released and the Amiga 4000 was released based on it (there were no 68040 based macs when this happened).
Now, lets come back to the present time, please tell me how on earth can we get these same advantages with OS4 , cmon, the hardware isnt made yet, on what will it run ? on the pathwork PPC accelerated Amigas ? with all those PCI hacks and so on ? Has anyone made a Price/performance racio on a 'powerfull' amiga and a PC/Mac running whatever OS you want ? Do you really believe a company like amiga inc can actually deliver a useable OS let alone new hardware ? How is the case with Haage & partner a leading amiga development company ? Please , If you want nostalgia, use antique amigas or whatever you like, you can even use Amiga One and call it real harware as in up to date hardware) but do not pretend that the amiga OS is but a niche OS for something that is using the name of a Great computer and is nothing like the Amiga once was.
Jorge Canelhas
Just because the machines aren't making money translates that they are dead. Many groups are still coding on those machines, just for coding's sakes (and art and music) Go on video.google.com and do a search on "demo amiga" or "commodore demo". There are even fresh Eurodemos still on Vic-20, search "robotic liberation" for you battle-star galactic/vic-20 fans... We're still here, forever more....
What's this guy smoking?
"20.) There has been a lot of debate in the Amiga community, in
the last couple of years, about the choice to make OS4 for PPC. After Apple switched to x86, the PPC is dead as a desktop CPU. Yet in the 25 questions you said that OS4 would never move away from PPC, and that you'd have to wait for OS5 to run AmigaOS on x86. One of the Frieden brothers estimated that a port to x86 could be done in only a few months (twice the time to port to a new PPC platform), and it would solve the hardware availability issues permanently. Given those facts, what's the reasoning behind the decision to stay with the PPC?
BM>> The Cell processor is used by Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii (stupid name by the way), and Playstation 3. There are numerous other high end graphics and multi-media devices coming out in the coming months that use Cell, and Cell is PPC. There is a great deal of opportunity staying with PPC and expect that with the conversations that we have had with Freescale, and IBM, that there are several OEM's that are interested in what we have planned as well."
I loved my amiga back in the day.
However in 1996/7 I went PC out of a need for more.
I've tried various other OS's over the years but have not been convinced.
Since OSX 10.4 things however have been different. Back i the day i used to head-butt mice to pretend to be a mac user in a derogatory way, however my new mac mini and macbook fill the extra the amiga used to provide in my computing life.
Yeah I still have a windows box for gaming and a kubuntu server for stuff but my macs provide my general computer needs and that sence of fun that was otherwise missing.
Should amiga release something i may bve tempted but i know its as much amiga as some company that buys some dead companies name to try and get ahead.
Times change, this does not mean new amiga will be bad, just not new amiga.
Anyway OSX is here and now and nice!
+----------------- | What is the question!
You missed one of the things I loved about Amigas. That was that Amigas could run MS/PCDOS/Windows 3.x as well as MacOS. Though I didn't have one then I saw an Amiga running MacOS and a Mac next to it and the Amiga was faster than the Mac at running Mac software. Back in '97/98 I bought my first PC and I ordered it from Gateway. When I ordered it I specifically said one reason I bought a Gateway was because they bought Amiga and I wanted to see the Amiga brought back. Big mistake. They didn't do anything with it, and the two laptops I bought from Gateway went bad and their tech support sucked.
FalconShould there be a Law?
For some of us the Amiga systems bring back some pretty fond memories. It was my first computer system and I enjoyed every aspect of it, unlike my future IMB compatible systems. I remember my dad booting up windows 95, being frustrated he would point to his Amiga and say 'Windows 95?! Amiga 85!' Yeah, MS was way behind yet doing much better than AOS in retail.
Indeed the system was way ahead of its time (if in stability alone), unfortunately I was reminded of this by ever Amiga fan I crossed. I think that was part of the downfall, it was SO great that it turned into a small Niche market where the only people who wanted to use it were those who just wanted something 'better' than the standard systems that were coming of age. It seemed as if, looking back that the owners never really wanted it to be a Mainstream product, cause then it just would not be cool.
I'm sure that most of original owners of the system would love to see it come back, which is exactly why the name is still used today. Unfortunately it looks like Amiga is going for the small Niche market again, something I don't think ensures longevity in todays world. When one of the big boys decides to step on their toes it will once again be the end of that legendary name.
Viva La Amiga
I know the focus on Slashdot isn't politics, or interpreting corporate-speak, but if this guy presented to a VC (IE, real business-people)he'd be lucky if he didn't get thrown out by security. Dissecting the platform strategy or mulling development timelines is an interesting theoretical exercise, but based just on what I see here, I wouldn't bet a dollar on this amounting to anything. Any
I'm in finance now (yeah, I know), but I used to be a TRS-80 CoCo guy (kid, at that point), and pined to own The Great Amiga. It was amazing, and I admired the enthusiasm of the Amigo community. This guy isn't giving Amiga lovers hope, he's trying to ride the name (or he's genuine...and manic).
So, how is Elvis? I hear that Roy Orbison and George Harrison are stomping on bugs quicker than Johnny Cash can crank out them line of BCPL.
Stick Men
20) Virtual folders that unify two or more real folders.
...
:-)
21) File-change notifications
22) The WINDOW: device... create and manipulate windows as files. The parameters would be passed like: open("WINDOW:0/0/400/100/Window Title"); which specifies window location, size and title. Also SPEAK: could accept parameters for voice synthesis.
23) The whole disk-based portion of the system was located under one abstract assignment, SYS:, which could point almost anywhere
24) Each filesystem had its own root. The root of the current path would be accessed with a simple colon prefix (instead of VOLNAME:). The CLI would remember previous dirs and take you back to them with 'pcd'.
25) Escape codes could be used to draw bitmaps within console windows, although this was an unintended feature.
26) DOS had pattern-expansion that at the time was between globbing and regex in richness. Pattern support, as I recall, depended on the program intentionally passing the pattern string through an AmigaDOS expansion function which returned a linked-list of files. This has the advantage of not needing 'xargs' due to fileset size; but you had to use an xarg-like utility for certain commands because they did not internally support expansion (these few commands were written for single files, so these cases were rare).
27) A Unified bitmap and scalable (Agfa) FONTS: location, and I recall that rendering functions were later unified. This was more Mac-like and way ahead of the PC (which had balkanized fonts upto Win95). The bitmap fonts could be 32-color and also animated like GIFs. The first PC OS to handle loadable font-display through GPU coprocessing (the Blitter).
28) Each filesystem was 'bisected' with the allocation map and main dir in the middle of the partition, and each new file assinged to grow on one side or the other. Supposedly this kept head thrashing minimal in certain scenarios.
29) Most commands were 're-entrant' and could be configured to pre-load and link in memory to perform as if they were internal to the CLI. Since each command was equal to the parent CLI process, no process-creation or other overhead was incurred, and it saved memory and instruction cache as well.
30) Programs (apps) were often just the main binary plus the matching "binary.info" file (which defined the icon and params). Ones needing libraries, AV data and such were simply played inside of a 'drawer' (folder) to keep everything together, so installing a program often meant copying its folder onto your HD (wherever you liked) and install wizards were kindof rare.
31) CLI escaping and quoting were powerful but very clean, and much less likely (IMO) than bash to lead to misleading code (especially when pattern expansion was in the mix). Adoption of Unix-y features was very selective, and the OS as a whole was probably more true to the everything-as-file concept than a typical Unix workstation.
32) Event-handling in the standard devices was sophisticated enough that daemons were rare.
33) The core OS (scheduler+DOS) knew the difference between a thread, shell-bound process, user-facing GUI process, a handler/driver, and something called a "commodity" which is similar in function to OSX Dashboard widgets. Many tasklist utilities would display them quite distinctly as a result, and just show the apps by default.
34) Racter: 3rd-party app that combined an Eliza-like engine with an animated 3D metalic female face (circa 1986).
35) Diga! Also about 1986, a multiplexed VT-100 app that could (with two Amigas) transfer files both ways while chatting, with resume, CRC etc.
and
42) Had both NIL: and NULL: devices that functioned differently.
Oh, and for proof, check amigaworld.net under "OS4 Hardware" and "OS4 Software" sections.
There is currently no available hardware...get it?
This is not flamebait it is the truth. Mod me up...
... they hold their breath, waiting for Linux to conquer the world...
... reputation of dishonesty.
That is a reputation that is not going to vanish over nite.
If they really have learned from their mistakes, then they should have kept quiet until they actually have something to release.
Show me, don't tell me.
"China and the Middle East block sites in order to suppress political or social dissent."
while India's intentions must be far more noble since we'll just present the story with "[India] is driven by national security-related paranoia, or hate speech that may lead to violence" as fact.
Can it run Duke Nukem Forever and use a Phantom lapboard?
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
NOT an Amiga demo
Show respect
I used to work for Ashton-Tate before it was bought out by Borland. Though it was very hush hush at the time, I personally built a business plan for porting dBASE III Plus over to the Amiga. We had a group of Amiga developers lined up to do the port. The marketing and business plan showed that there was a profit to be made if the port was done. I managed to get the honchos from Commodore to meet with Ed Esber and with management from the Amiga development company. After a couple months of serious work to pull it all together, it fell apart in the board room. With A-T focused on other platforms, and the mistake they made with dBASE for Mac (which really didn't have anything similarity to dBASE), they decided to not follow the Amiga market. I personally feel that if they had, that the Amiga platform and market would've been a lot different and would have been taken more seriously.
But hey, it was a fun project. (Ah, the good old days.)
TheTiminator
You mean eWorld right?
Interesting, that.
I mean, who needs a computer system which was as stable, affordable and advanced as the Amiga when you could have the piece of gosa PC system which confuses and frustrates the hell out of everybody, wastes time and money, and which is now the de-facto norm in computing?
I dunno. The Amiga had that Open Source, non-corporate, power to the people feeling. I wonder what the world would look like today if Amigas had proliferated. --I mean, Bill Gates is greedy and manipulative. Steve Jobs insults users by assuming they are all pod-people who need computers to look and act like baby toys. The Amiga, by contrast, was functional, powerful, sensible and accessible; it even had a sense of humor. Remember the message you got when things crashed? Humor versus FUD.
Imagine. . .
-FL
It was so sad seeing such a great platform fall from grace but crap happens. But now the so called new Amiga beta release is the logest running joke in vaporware. Somebody should just put the whole project out of it's misery.
But it's not like this incarnation of Amiga is built to run on desktops and compete against Linux and Windows. This is probably targeting multimedia handhelds and other multimedia devices. Even though /.ers generally think the handheld world is already controlled by WinMob/Linux/Java, I do handheld stuff for a major corporation, and I have to be proficient on about 4-5 different platforms (and none of them have to do with Blackberries!). There's plenty of room for competition in the handheld market, and I'd be happy to see Amiga get in there and...I pray...allow me to forget everything I know about BREW, Java, and/or Windows Mobile. :)
In fact, according to the docs/usenet posts I've read, the old PalmOS emulator was chock full of, if not based on, old Amiga code. If this incarnation of AmigaOS is as well designed, and adds features that allow it to compete with Windows Mobile, it'd be great for anyone that uses a smartphone. Generally, with every platform I develop for, there are strengths and weaknesses, and none of them are clearly the best for everything (or in some cases, anything).
We do not need a scalable O/S that plays on a range of devices. We need a portable home computer with standard hardware for video and sound, a good UI and above all, an API that is not burried under tens of protocols and layers of architecture...a CPU that makes sense (with a few instructions), standard hardware for 2D and 3D applications, standard hardware for controllers and I/O.
The difference between the Amiga and the PC is that the PC is a closed platform owned by Intel and Microsoft (not counting Linux), whereas the Amiga was an open platform that one could use the hardware in anyway imaginable, since the O/S was open.
...Sorry. :)
DEAD HORSE!!!! STOP GOD DAMED BEATING IT ALREADY!!
This project wont stand a chanse! If it, by some twist of fate and a serious divine intervention, manages to acutaly get released to the market they will be dragged down, held back and squeezed under the Amiga name. Thishere system will have nothing in common with Amiga og yore, and thus there will be no market for it under that name.
Maybe if they changed the name and tried some serious marketing...
Or maybe if they could just produce a tangible product we can evaluate..
When in danger, whewn in doubt! Run in circles, scream and shout!
Well, not necessarily here on Slash... but here's my opinion.
Where's the "killer app" for this operating system? I mean, really? Sure, in my opinion there has always been room in the past for new operating systems, but I'm afraid that ship has sailed a long time ago. There are already a smorgasbord of good operating systems out there that meet the needs of modern developers both on the desktop and in embedded systems. So where's the compelling reason to scope out one more OS platform when developing either of these platforms?
Embedded systems need a good real-time operating system, or at least one that is light on resources. OK, so by default I know in a few years we're going to be seeing really powerful embedded systems, but that will only open the door to increase the OS footprint using existing OS's. They're all still being developed, so they will continue to grow as the hardware platforms also continue to grow. This isn't new, this is just economics of the computer industry 101.
Today if you want to develop an embedded platform you have a multitude of good choices of platform. I don't see much market for yet another OS. If you want quick and dirty development on the cheap, you've got Linux kernels... if you want well polished and flexible you've got Symbian. If you want something verging on a desktop OS in complexity you've got CE / PocketPC / Whatever they hell they're calling it this year. Take your pick... and these are only the high-profile contenders. For each of these, there are probably a dozen other alternatives that work just as well. I don't see how AmigaOS is going to compete in this market space.
Now to the desktop side. Sorry, I still don't see it. In many ways I feel OSX was the natural spiritual successor to AmigaOS. Many of the things that made it great are quite obviously inspiring similar or even identical functionality in OSX. That's natural; many of the things AmigaOS did were only great by the standards of the time. And today, only Apple does the same thing with the unified architecture of platform an operating system... Microsoft can't compete there because they have such a wide range of hardware to support. As long as Apple maintains control of the hardwar they can tune the OS to said hardware and provide a user experience not a million miles away from what AmigaOS gave us 20 years ago.
Even then, on the desktop side you have a multitude of choices again; Linux, BSD, Windows, you name it! There are even Windows workalikes, MS-DOS platforms. And if you think DOS is dead you've obviously never worked in the embedded space. Sure it may just be a bootstrapper for your applications rather than a true OS, but there are plenty of people still coding in the 16-bit DOS space, sometimes with 32-bit extensions where required. Hell, I even maintain a DOS installation in a Parallels virtual machine on my Macbook so I can do development in the environment... so there's yet another desktop OS to compete with.
I loved the Amiga platform. I had two of them; a 500 and a 1200. I also had an Atari ST which I loved just as much. Having said that though, the only compelling reason I can find to even look at the new AmigaOS is for the purposes of nostalgia. Sorry, that doesn't cut it either for me. I've done the nostalgia thing... I've booted these OS's in emulators and checked them out. They're dated and do nothing that modern OS's don't. Sure I can view these platforms through rose-tinted spectacles and profess my love for the stuff they did, but by modern standards they just fail to impress on most levels.
I'm not saying we've reached a plateau with regard to operating systems... I personally feel that all the major players have plenty of places to go. However, just another OS with a desktop metaphor interface in an already crowded market place... you'd have to give it away to make it viable unless it does something incredible. Look at Be. Great OS, and to my mind the closest we've been to an AmigaOS like experience on Intel architecture... but they tried to sell i
Amiga should give up on these pipe dreams of resurecting the OS and cash out. I'm sure someone would love to pick up the name and develop a commercial Linux distrubution... Or perhaps Amiga corp itself could start marketing Linux-based desktops...
The best way to capitalize on a brand like Amiga is to go where your market has gone - Linux.
qz
Hello there. My name is Irrelevant.
"[W]e established the concept and vision ...
A concept and a vision - Great! Perhaps with funding they can turn it into an idea!
I'm sick and tired of these hip, "ironic" sigs. This is an actual, honest-to-goodness no-nonsense sig!
Face it: The only reason for the lack of PC fanboys is that most of the PC stuff is just crap. Compare a Porsche to a nameless japanese car, it's far worth in the computer world: To get something done on a PC you need patience and ignorance beyond healthy doses. Rarely you find something that really does its job in a truely comfortable way.
Example: At my company about 70% of the engineers use a Noron Commander lookalike to manage their files. Even though by todays standards this interface is very limited -- well, at least it doesn't get in their way. Some people even prefer EMACS to Word when writing short README-files. Does this make any sense? You could argue that it's a matter of taste, but why are the people who choose standard PC solutions constantly complaining about the computer, while UNIX guys and coders are constantly complaining about the users? Doesn't it suggest some misunderstanding as to what qualities are required to really do a decent job.
PCs are good at being tolerable. Thats it. Amigas, Macs, Ataris and Silicion Graphics boxes where loved by both: their creators and their users. It makes a huge difference.
You should be carefull if you say Linux is today what the Amiga was yesterday. I think it is all in the OS. -An Amiga starts on 10 seconds, a clean install on 3 -You can turn off an Amiga with no shutdown commands -You can choose to run CLI or GUI. If you choose to run CLI you can still run GUI apps -Programs are installed in logical folders -If you want to delete a program, simply erase its folder (and in some cases edit s:user-startup) -Workbench can be as small as 700 kb. A 3 MB install of Workbench would get you a highly advanced GUI that is rock stable -Remember Linux is an OS, Amiga was the whole package. Say, if you do not have a mouse just control it with amiga key + arrows. An elegant solution.
My homepage: www.erkan.se
Will the Amiga OS Programmers step and say "Hey, Its alive!"..
Someone other than a figurehead for Amiga should step up and make some comments that wont break NDA's....
Sad, Other than the Amiga OS was way ahead of its time, and very usable, if it was actively upgraded what would we have in our OS today? Vista and OSX wouldn't even be close to usability and eye-candy.